


Choosing the Road Forward

by Rjslpets



Series: Choice and Punishment [1]
Category: Nero Wolfe - Rex Stout
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-28
Updated: 2011-05-28
Packaged: 2017-10-19 20:46:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rjslpets/pseuds/Rjslpets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Archie contemplates his position after Saul is shot due to his error</p>
            </blockquote>





	Choosing the Road Forward

**Author's Note:**

> With all admiration to Rex Stout

Saul Panzer is the best operative I have ever seen.  The only person I can think of who might touch him would be Nero Wolfe, if he lost 200 pounds and took some exercise.  Moreover, Saul is one of my friends; I play poker with him every week.  You have to count someone as a friend when they win money from you every week.  And I was responsible for getting him shot.

Part of my job as general assistant for Wolfe is watching for extraneous hardware at the little gatherings that Wolfe calls.  Unmasking murderers tends to bring out the violence in people.  But at the last party, I had slipped up.  I hadn’t kept my eye on the right part of the room and I hadn’t checked the guests carefully enough.  As a result, I was too far to get to the gun and Saul wasn’t.  And worst of all, Wolfe had warned me and I hadn’t listened to him – the cardinal mistake in my job.

As a result of my screw up, Saul was in the hospital and I was sitting at my desk on Sunday afternoon, typing.  I was typing a detailed schedule of all my social engagements for the next seven days, and since it was April, my calendar was very busy with the Rainbow Room, the Flamingo Club and the baseball stadium all penciled in.  Wolfe was up in the plant rooms. Not a usual activity for him on a Sunday but a _Cattleya_ cross that he and Theodore had nursed along for over a year was on the verge of blooming.  Theodore had actually given up his Sunday off to keep watch over the darling sprout.  As a result of this departure from routine, I had time to type up the schedule and put it on Wolfe’s desk before he came down.

Not to sound conceited, but I don’t make a lot of mistakes and it is even rarer for me not to listen to Wolfe.  This track record is mostly the result of intensive training.  I certainly wasn’t born as perfect as I am now.  And most of the training was done by Wolfe and Saul.

I first met Wolfe when I was 22 years old.  I had come from Ohio just after high school and started working as a guard on the docks at 19.  By the time I was 21, I had killed two men.  I had started a snot-nosed kid from Ohio and was well on the way to becoming a major punk.  I met Saul at about that time and he saw something in me and suggested me to Wolfe for "a simple job."  At least I thought it was simple – Wolfe needed someone to drive him out to Long Island to see some flowers.  Little did I know that Wolfe considers all things on wheels death traps and alternately growls and barks at anyone around him when ensconced in one.  I was able to deliver the fat genius there and back again in one enormous piece.  As a result of this driving prowess and my inability to be deferential, Wolfe decided to offer me a job as his feet, secretary and general dogsbody.  However, I needed a lot of training.  The arrogant attitude I had developed on the wharf was not to Wolfe’s taste (although my native sense of humor was).  Nor did he approve of violence if it could be avoided and at that time in my life, I used it as my major method of dispute resolution.  So he worked out a punishment methodology only a genius with way too much time on his hands could come up with.

My first year living in Wolfe’s house was…difficult.  Looking back, I have to admire his technique, the man is a genius.  He needed to civilize me without losing my independence and my spirit.  The fat bastard had come up with punishments worthy of his genius and particularly effective given my temperament.   And one of those methods was why I was writing up my schedule for the coming week.  I had always suggested my punishment, the duration and severity – part of the catering to my temperament.  Wolfe could not accept and then I would make a counter-offer.  One week was a significant duration for a punishment.  Wolfe generally preferred shorter ones and moving on.  Punishments could interfere with the rigid schedule that he runs on and that was something that he disliked intensely.

The schedule was only the first part of the punishment – the duration.  The second part was the intensity.  I opened up a locked drawer in my desk.  It was kept locked not because of Wolfe, but because sometimes other people sat at my desk.  And some of those people were private investigators and therefore, nosy.  In the drawer were three flat square boxes, slightly larger than the average jeweler’s box for a necklace.  They were stacked and I reached in and took them all out in a single stack.  The top one was the smallest and was a light yellow.  I put this one aside without opening it.  It contained a plain chain with a dog tag on it.  The dog tag said “I work for Nero Wolfe.”  The chain looked like an ordinary chain but the edges of the links were rough.  As I wore it during the day, it would scrape against my skin every time I moved, reminding me of what the tag said.  After a day of wearing that chain, the skin on my neck and chest would be red with white scratches.  It was a reminder not a punishment.  So back in the drawer it went.

The second box was gold brocade.  (The yellow theme was hardly surprising considering that it was Wolfe’s favorite color and he had bought all the boxes and their contents.)   It contained a leather collar, about one inch in thickness.  It was fine enough to be worn under a collar and tie, although I had a supply of larger shirt collars to accommodate punishments.  It had a thin buckle that was as flat as possible.  It was worn slightly tighter than comfortable and reminded me of my punishment every time I went to turn my head.  Looking down at a typewriter, something I did a lot of on an average day, was barely possible and very uncomfortable.

The third box was covered in deep gold velvet and was very heavy.  Inside was a collar – a term I use advisedly since the thing lies flat across my shoulders and back and rests on my collarbone.  It was heavy being made of lead and was incredibly uncomfortable to have on, making all movements difficult.  The edges were polished but they did rub and I often got sores from this one.  It closed behind my neck with a small leather buckle that was on top of the lead.  This one was more than uncomfortable, it was painful.

I returned the third box to the drawer with the first one.  Carefully, in the middle of Wolfe’s enormous desk, on top of the days of typed schedule, I placed the box.  I had offered my punishment.  The duration was indicated by how long the typed schedule was and the severity by the collar.  For the collars represented not only a physical aspect – each represented a level of loss of control. 

The light chain meant that Wolfe and I continued our normal discourse, although I was not permitted my usual level of “flummery” as Wolfe called it.  The leather collar was a signal that I felt my fault serious enough that I should surrender some control.  When I wore that collar, Wolfe had the right to change my schedule.  He could cancel any event or schedule one.  I spent one punishment taking notes at the New York Ladies Garden Club, saving Wolfe from the horror of being in a roomful of women while allowing him to learn all the latest gossip in the horticultural world.  It was a three-day event at the Plaza and sent me nearly to distraction. 

I knew that Wolfe was planning to visit Hewitt, a fellow orchid lover on Long Island, this week.  I had already pointed out to him that I was going to a ball game.  I was guessing that that ballgame would disappear off the schedule and the drive would appear instead.  I was just hoping that he remembered that I didn’t share his aversion to exercise or women.  But curtailment was part of the punishment and given my mistake, I could not object.

I heard the elevator in the hallway and knew that Wolfe was coming down from the plant room for a little reading before dinner.  I assumed the fat genius knew that I would have prepared my offer for correction and wanted to get that settled before dinner so that it wouldn’t interfere with his appreciation of Fritz Brenner’s cooking or his digestion afterwards.  Any punishment wouldn’t start until Monday morning.  Wolfe didn't work on Sundays.

“Good afternoon, Archie.” He said, entering the room and heading to his desk chair.  He took a moment to wallow in its comfort.  Custom made and the only chair that I am convinced Wolfe felt completely at ease in.  It had been built to order to accommodate his bulk and was also upholstered in his favorite color, yellow.  I swiveled my desk chair to watch him consider the pile on his desk.  He picked up the box and set it carefully aside and leafed through the papers.  I was somewhat surprised when he pushed the papers towards me.

“Unsatisfactory.”  A calm statement but the thinning of his lips told me that he was still angry and that what I had planned didn’t go far enough to in his opinion.  And in this case, his opinion was the only one that mattered.  I reminded myself, I had gotten Saul shot and I deserved whatever the genius could dish out.  It was a good thing I had stiffened myself with that thought, because the next thing Wolfe did almost sent me running out of the brownstone.  He pushed the yellow box back with another grunt that I easily interpreted as still not satisfactory.  The rejection of the box was a devastating surprise.  The rejection of the box meant that he wanted to use what was in the final box, the gold velvet one that still sat in my drawer.  I had worn that piece only three times in the years I had been with Wolfe.  Each time for less than three days…and I had broken every time. As uncomfortable as the collar was (and it was very heavy and painful), that was not the worst part of punishment.

Whereas the chain only functioned as a reminder and the leather collar allowed Wolfe to control my schedule, the lead collar represented a complete loss of control for me.  While wearing it, Wolfe controlled my life, from what I did to what I ate.  In fact, one of the first breakdowns I had in the collar arose from the fact that Wolfe’s idea of what I should eat tended to be based on what kept his seventh of a ton happy.  I actually became sick tying to eat the portions he was serving me.  He hadn’t repeated that mistake, but the feeling that I couldn’t say no had left me completely broken (as well as sick to my stomach).

The second time I wore the collar, I broke on the afternoon of the first day. 

As these thoughts went through my mind, I slowly took the gold velvet box out of the drawer, put it on top of the schedule and pushed it across the desk to Wolfe.  He looked at me for a moment and then spoke, “Flummery!  This is punishment, Archie, but not a penance worthy of martyrdom!”  He sorted out a few pages from the stack and pushed the rest back to me.  Three days’ worth, so Monday through Wednesday and I might make the ballgame.  Although, given my reactions in the past to the lead collar, I wasn’t going to bet on the possibility of me going.


End file.
